


Bite Down on Unreasonable Sorrow

by the_moon_girl



Category: Back to the Future (Movies)
Genre: 80s typical stigma towards mental health, Angst, Dissociation, Gen, George & Lorraine being good parents, Hurt/Comfort, Major Marty and Doc friendship feels, Marty struggling to adjust because of everything, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-Traumatic Time Travel Stress Disorder, Self-Harm, also Doc stayed in 1985 w clara and the kids, bc I don't want Doc and Marty apart damn it, everybody is worried about Marty, set p much a month after the events of the trilogy, so everything's real fresh for our boi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29810811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_moon_girl/pseuds/the_moon_girl
Summary: The repercussions of Marty's travels through time finally catch up to him, in ways that he hadn't anticipated and can't understand. Time and reality seem to bend at random and sometimes, at his own whim. His memories become moth-eaten. Some days, the world isn't real any more and other days, the only thing around that isn't real is himself.He waits for it all to go away, he tries his hardest to pretend that everything's fine, but the more he does, the more apparent it becomes that Marty is coming apart at the seams.
Relationships: Emmett "Doc" Brown & Marty McFly, Marty McFly/Jennifer Parker
Comments: 13
Kudos: 8





	1. Prologue: Dancing on the Ceiling

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Do we need these any more? Either way, I don't own anything.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

It all started when the ceiling of Marty's bedroom started to blur. He couldn't pinpoint when it began or when exactly decent sleep became elusive. A few nights that featured a couple of restless hours evolved into an unforgiving stretch of fruitless pseudo rest. He spent what felt like a dim eternity in a state of half-wakefulness, with sweat soaked sheets wrapped round his legs and a feverish chill that spread a sheen over his skin. The sounds from the radio turned tinny and distant, with all speech warbled and the music a twangy discord.

All was a sickly dream state until the morning sun pierced through the haze. Next to discarded clammy bed clothes, Marty would watch the room fill with brightness in an exhausted relief. With only a handful more hours left before his day would have to begin, he’d fall into a brief but blessed sleep, time passing in a dreamless blink. When he would wake up next, he’d leave the almost-dreams of last night behind him with a shiver and a firm shove to the back of his mind.

It was within these restless hours, as he stared up into the dark with aching eyes, yearning for a sleep unhaunted, that the ceiling started to change. Too exhausted for logic or fear, he’d stare up and wonder whose ceiling it was. Whose room he was in. Was he at Nana and Grandpa’s? Or was it Lorraines’ room, at Lorraines’ house, where Nana and Grandpa were Mrs and Mr Baines, because they couldn’t be Nana and Grandpa if there was no David, Linda or Marty?

_ What year was it? _

He reached up with a heavy arm, fingertips stretching up above where everything was slowly grinding, forever moving.

Was he at Docs’ place? Or at the other Docs’ place? Or at his Docs’ place in that other time? Was he crashing at the garage in his own small bed, with the previous hours spent watching MTV or taking apart something fantastical and intricate? Was he spending sleepless nights under itchy sheets, with the creation or damnation of his whole world at his very fingertips? Had Doc been helping him with his homework or had he been showing off his skateboard tricks to a captivated Jules and Verne?

_ When was he? _

“Is Dad dead?” Marty asked the ceiling one night, watching it melt behind a well of tears. His voice sounded strange and small, too young to be his own, “Is Dad dead?”

Sometimes the answers wouldn’t come until morning was finally dredged up from the dark of night; other times, the answers would come as quickly as the questions would go. Some nights there were no questions. Some nights, the ceiling wasn’t his own and he would try to coax slumber under a roof that no longer existed. Some nights, his eyes weren’t on the ceiling; they were on himself. He was by his own bed watching himself try to sleep, too afraid to move, the threats of paradoxes that could rip through the universe ringing through his head. Then he would roll over and Marty was Marty again, he could press his own palms to his own face and not destroy all of space and time itself.  
  
One night, he pulled himself out of bed without meaning to. He stood without knowing why, focused on the feeling of his toes dug deep into the carpet. He’d fallen asleep in his clothes again- or had he fallen asleep at all? How long had he been awake, if he could even compare this muggy state to clear consciousness? All was a waking dream; only his feet, planted on the ground, existed. The rest of him was sailing away, floating up to join the fog and mist of near morning.  
  
“Is this real?” Marty whispered to himself.  
  
He woke up in his bed. He was still in his clothes, but there was no carpet at his feet and his body was no longer fading into water vapour. He rolled over and stared up at his ceiling, his body crying out from exhaustion, his eyes wide and tired.  
  
Marty stretched out his arm, fingertips straining upwards, the sight before him still and unmoving in the daylight.  
  
When he spoke, he could hear his voice splinter like thin ice.  
  
“What’s happening to me?”


	2. How Soon Is Now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To everyone who's read my story, commented, kudosed, thank you so so much! I'm really glad you're enjoying it so far!!
> 
> I'll be taking a few liberties with Marty's PTSD, dissociation and general mental health. I do refer back to a list of symptoms for both disorders, but I'm not a psychologist. Also, I feel like mental health is unique to each person and there's still so much about the human brain that we still just don't understand. Also, this seventeen year old boy suffered multiple head traumas in like, two weeks. Add time travel related trauma into the mix (along with all the regular trauma already under his belt) and I feel like there's plenty of wiggle room for Marty's symptoms to not be strictly by the books!
> 
> Other characters will be coming along in later chapters, rn I'm just establishing what it is that Marty's going through.
> 
> One last thing, all the chapters are song titles- not sure if Marty would listen to Lionel Ritchie or the Smiths, but I feel like they fit.

Marty didn’t talk to anyone about the sleepless strangeness that he was forced to endure. The secret sat like a dull weight in his chest. As he’d lie in the morning, wondering if what he’d suffered had come from a broken psyche or the consequences of time travel, that weight would grow heavier and heavier. In spite of this, the idea of telling someone had been dismissed as quickly as it’d crossed his mind.

His parents were completely out of the question. He felt like if he told them this one thing, then all the secrets of his adventures would come spilling out and he’d be locked away in a heartbeat. He wanted to talk to Jennifer about it, but he didn’t want her to worry (especially as she remembered so little from the future). Besides, being with Jennifer was his escape, a slice of normal bliss that illuminated his day. She was beyond amazing and he didn’t want the time they spent together to be anything less than that.

This left him with Doc; and for him, there were no excuses. There might have been if he’d stayed in the 1800s, but he hadn’t. He’d come back to 1985, with Clara and the kids, he’d stayed (for which Marty was incredibly grateful). It wasn’t exactly the way it used to be. There was a house to go to now as well as the garage, there was Clara to hang out with and an excited Jules and Verne to be harassed by; but the time he spent with Doc hadn’t changed. It was so easy to forget that for Doc, they hadn’t hung out in years. It was like no time had passed at all. There was no awkward catch up or a struggle to find the familiar footholds of their friendship; they simply were, as they had always been. Time had only served to strengthen their bond, not weaken it.

So why couldn’t Marty just tell him? Why did the words die before they’d even reach his mouth and the weighted secret crush him into silence. If anybody could understand what was happening to him, it would be Doc. Which was exactly why Marty couldn’t talk to him about it. When he really thought about it, he didn’t want to know what was happening to him. He just wanted it to go away and while he was waiting for it to do so, pretend that it simply wasn’t happening. Maybe Doc had gone through something similar after his time travels, maybe this was a regular part of adjusting to a time stream and it was nothing to worry about. But what if Doc hadn’t gone through this? What if this wasn’t a symptom of some bizarre post time travel sickness?

_What if he was just going crazy?_

The way he saw it, he could either bring it up with Doc and find out that he was losing his mind or that everything happening to him was actually normal. The problem was though, the risks of the former far outweighed the latter. The mere chance of hearing the worst case scenario being confirmed, it conjured up something in Marty that went beyond terror; it was paralysing. So, he didn’t say anything to anyone. He couldn’t. Not even after a week of waking dreams and 2001: A Space Odyssey levels of bizarre outer body experiences did he confide in anyone. He didn’t talk about the nightmares either, though it was mostly pride that kept that part secret.

There was a sense of shame clinging to the nightmares that Marty couldn’t shake no matter how hard he tried. He couldn’t bring himself to admit that he’d wake up crying in the middle of the night because Doc had been obliterated in a hail of bullets in his dreams; or that he’d spend up to an hour outside his parents room, listening out for his dads’ snores with the image of his gravestone emblazoned into his mind. It felt childish, for dreams to cripple him so easily. He found himself hugging his dad more and more often, as if visual confirmation wasn’t proof enough that he was really there and not six feet under.

It wasn’t just his dad that Marty had started to cling to. At times, it felt as though his entire family could slip right through his fingers. He’d see his mom out of the corner of his eye and scare himself, thinking that he could see her face and form changing right in front of him. He’d even listened with rapt attention to everything Linda and Dave said, and felt relief when he discovered that, at their core, they were still just Linda and Dave.

What he did with his dad, seeking him out when nothing else could dispel the terror from his nightmares, he did with Doc as well. The viscous horror that crawled up from the pits of his subconscious would often linger long after he’d woken up; it brought up the kind of thoughts and feelings that logic could rarely soothe. It wasn’t quite as easy to check up on Doc as it was his dad, seeing as the guy was located on the other side of town. He'd considered calling, only he could never think of anything to say. The remnants of a normal sleep schedule meant that typically he had either two hours to get to school or fifteen minutes. When he did have two hours, he’d feel stupid at the thought of rocking up to Docs’ at the crack of dawn just because of a nightmare; and when he had fifteen minutes, he would be already running late for school.

Instead, Marty would force himself to spend the entire day at school, wrapped up in an anxious downward spiral that only came to an end when he could finally get to Docs’. No explanation was ever needed or even requested; he’d always been free to come and go Docs’ as he pleased. Doc undoubtedly knew something was up. Every now and again, he’d throw Marty an appraising look, a narrow eyed scowl reserved for only the most complicated of scientific theories. He’d probably taken in the bags under his eyes, the relief that would flicker across the kids’ face from any physical contact from him, however slight. He was shrewd enough to know, however, that Marty would either respond badly or untruthfully to his prying. Whatever observations he had, he kept to himself.

Save for a few comments from his parents and Jennifer about the tiredness that seemed to haunt his features, it was relatively easy for Marty to act as though everything was fine. He was something of an expert at keeping secrets. He had to be, long before the time machine had even been invented. Lying to his mom about meeting up with Jennifer, to his teachers about why he’d showed up late to class, to both his parents about what the hell even did with his time. His dreams, his fears, the causes for his sadness and joy, all were closely guarded information, save from two people. This secret would be no harder to keep than any of the others. In comparison to being the worlds’ first human time traveller and altering the course of the future on multiple occasions, his sleep troubles were pretty tame. He could push his sleepless sufferings to the back of his mind and let them lie there, malignant and dormant until the night came.

It was easy enough to keep his mouth shut, until that insidious strangeness broke out into the daytime.

-

Marty woke up that morning sat on the edge of his bed, eyes clouded with fading slumber staring down into his lap. He didn’t know where he was. Unaware that he was even at home, let alone in his own bedroom, a feeling of confused disquiet washed over him. If someone asked him what day it was, what year, which month they were in, there would be no response he could offer. He found himself racking his brain for an answer when he wasn’t even sure of the question. A musing continued to drift by and break his concentration: he hadn’t fallen asleep in his clothes. That was a good thing, right? Did he always go to bed without getting changed? Where was he? Had his mom taken his clothes again- or was that Lorraine, not Mom, because they were distinctly not the same.

It took great effort to raise his head, like the air had become a heavy, wet sand that he now had to wade through. Everything was slow and murky, including him. He could hear his own laboured breathing from a distance, like his lungs had vacated his chest and taken residence in some hidden corner. He wanted to look around him quicker, he wanted to shake his head and snap out of that death like trance. Instead, he was condemned to slowly take in his surroundings, terror blistering inside his heart. The room was unreal and the walls were unknown to him. Marty got the impression that if he could just reach out and touch something, it would unravel in spools of mist. All was a foreign and fragile illusion, school play scenery that would take one kick to reduce it to scraps.

It took what felt like a frighteningly long time for him to recognise where he was. When he did, his lungs reappeared in his chest, he could hear them working loudly as they convulsed into a dry sob. The fog lifted suddenly, like it had never been there in the first place and reality returned to normal speeds. All became very familiar and solid. Marty reached out and touched his bedside table and watched as it didn’t disintegrate before his very eyes. There was no mist nor mire, only wood could be felt beneath his hand, corporeal and cold.

This wasn’t the first time in recent weeks that he’d woken up without a clue where or when he was. He doubted he’d ever get used to the disorientating feeling of not even knowing whose bed he was in, let alone which century. Being in a state of utter confusion for the first few moments of the day was exhausting and awful, but it was only for a few seconds, a minute at most. This wasn’t one of those times. He could try to fool himself all he wanted, he could try to convince himself that it was just like those other times; that he’d been half asleep, caught up in the leftovers of his semi-dream state. The truth would still make itself known though, devouring him from the inside out.

He had been awake. He’d looked around at the room he’d lived in his whole life and still hadn’t known where he was. 

He pulled his now trembling hand away from the bedside table and shifted further back onto the bed. He curled his legs up to his chest and circled his arms around them, gripping onto himself as tight as he could, until his fingernails dug into his flesh. Anxious eyes peeked over his knees, scarcely daring to blink lest everything around him would morph back into an unrecognisable mirage. He was unravelling, he could feel it. His heart was trying to pound out of his rib cage and his breathing was coming in sharp, short bursts. He gripped on tighter, forcing himself to take in a deep breath.

The entire house was so silent that when Marty spoke, it was as if his voice had broken the sound barrier, “Okay, okay okay McFly, it’s fine,” he drew in another breath that was supposed to be steadying, but it was as trembly as his voice, “you’re fine, it’s okay. Everything’s fine. It wasn’t real, it wasn’t real.”

His shaking was getting worse. He was going into full panic mode and he couldn’t, he wouldn’t let himself lose his shit over this. He pulled loose an arm that had been wrapped up so tightly, and slammed the base of his palm against his temple. A dull pain blossomed and Marty felt slightly more grounded. His hand thudded against the side of his head again. And again. And again.

“It’s 1985,” he says between deep controlled breaths, “it’s the _real_ 1985\. Everything’s fixed,” the fist resting at his temple unfurled only to grip onto a handful of his hair. He still sat curled up, half his face hidden against his legs. His eyes, bright with fear and frustration, narrowed into a glare, “it’s the real 1985. Everyone is okay. It wasn’t real,” his knuckles turned white and his eyes watered as he tugged at his hair, “this is real,” another tug, “this is real. This is real. I’m in the real 1985. Everything is okay.”

Marty let go of his hair and wrapped his arm back around himself. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his face against his knees, praying that his room wouldn’t change now it wasn’t under his watch. Swaying gently from side to side, he whispered a quiet, desperate mantra to himself.

“Everything’s okay. It’s the real 1985. Everything’s real. Everything’s okay. It’s the real 1985. Everything’s real. Everything’s okay."


End file.
